503 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded + Google Apps

No doubt I’m sure a lot of you are aware of this bandwidth exceeded evil mockery of a page. It’s honestly been awhile since I’ve stumbled across a page that had a 503 page on it, due to the large amounts of bandwidth that most hosts now have with their packages. Anyway, after viewing Bubs’ page and seeing that her bandwidth limit exceeded, I realized that the e-mail I was writing to her, wouldn’t get to her until she A.) Paid for more bandwidth to last her until the a new month, B.) Waited until May started to renew the bandwidth. This was because she was using her domain+hosting to receive/send out mail (at least, I’m assuming so.)

Even though I can control my own bandwidth, I have my e-mail accounts hosted off of my server. I currently use the Google Apps service for mail. There are two editions for the Apps: Standard Edition which is free, and Premier Edition which is $50/year. If you want to check out what the difference is, you can view their comparison. I currently have the standard edition, since I don’t utilize what the Premier offers.

With Google Apps, you can create your own e-mail “service” that will utilize GMail’s interface if you chose the webmail route, or you can use POP3 accounts which utilize’s Gmails POP and SMTP ports. Setting it up is very easy to do. When you go through the steps of signing up, it will provide you with two ways to authorize that you own the domain name being used. Once you have that domain name verified, you can set up your e-mail accounts through the interface (you can reach yours by http://google.com/hosted/atourworst.org. Once you have your accounts set up to your liking, you will need to log into your domain’s control panel (cpanel, dhpanel, ensim, et al.) and change your MX Entries to reflect ones provided by Google (you don’t/won’t need to use all of these, you can pick one):

  • aspmx.l.google.com.
  • alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
  • alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
  • aspmx2.googlemail.com.
  • aspmx3.googlemail.com.
  • aspmx4.googlemail.com.
  • aspmx5.googlemail.com.

So, even if your website has exceeded bandwidth, or hell, your server is down, you’ll still be able to send and receive e-mails. The reason why I also like this is because of GMail’s spam box that will rid of all the junk, so I won’t have to worry about receiving hundreds of crap e-mails. I don’t use the webmail feature often, since I prefer POP3, but if I’m out and about (say at Mark’s place) I’ll just log into my GH account and check mail through there.

Here are some images of Google Hosted’s admin panel:
google hosted
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Copious amounts of sun with no suntan lotion, sucks.

This weekend’s weather has been amazing! I love bright, warm, and sunny weather. Yesterday was pretty brutal for the soul fact that I had been outside from 11:30 until about 4:00pm with absolutely no suntan lotion. My parents are getting a pool in about a week, and in order to prepare for it we had to dig up some of the lawn in order to even it out for the pool, so I had to help out with the dirt.

Had to move some of that dirt to the front of the yard (and our driveway is about 225 feet, not including the extra 75 feet from where we were digging) to fill up a ditch that is constant cesspool (well, not really) so that the water logged area can be somewhat diminished. My sister rode the mower with the cart of dirt up since it would’ve been impossible to do with wheelbarrows. I think I walked up and down the driveway a good 300 or so times. It was boring, and torturous in regards to being so repetitive. I also helped with adding dirt to a line of Evergreen trees on the side of our property and the backend.

So, hours under the sun with no lotion, plus mud caked on my arms, hands, and legs left me pretty weary. I admit that as boring as it was, I didn’t mind being outside. I got a nice unhealthy burn, some exercise and felt pretty good about doing some dirty work.

However, I did not like the fact that I came across grub worms, worms, a rabbit’s skin with only three feet attached and god knows how many other atrocious bugs that I didn’t want to think about when I saw them.

A long cool shower ensued, and then I was finally able to head on over to Mark’s house. We went out and saw Hot Fuzz though I was so exhausted and antsy during the movie, that I kind of wished we had stayed in and watched a movie comfortably while cuddling. At least I got to see my cutie pie, as well as the movie being enjoyable!

Whitesoap will keep you fresh.

Earlier this week Ben had posted a thread at Mint Pages about moderating over at Whitesoap.com. Needless to say I now help moderate stories over at Whitesoap. It’s been really fun thus far because there have been so many articles I’ve come across, read, and bookmarked. Definitely an awesome way for me to pass my time too.

Today has been a long day so far. I woke up at 8:30am, cleaned up the kitchen, made myself breakfast and ate it outside while reading a book. I cleaned up my room, read some more, took a nice long shower, and got ready. FINALLY for the FIRST time in months I cleaned out my car inside and outside. I even paid $31 for a full tank of [unleaded] gas today. First time.. since, well, let’s just say it’s been awhile since I’ve had more than half a tank of gas in my car.

Ended up going up to Mount Prospect to Mark’s friend Tim’s place and then we headed downtown for a BBQ by a harbor off of Lake Shore drive. It was absolutely gorgeous outside today and although it ended up getting a bit chillier once the sun went down, it was still warm since they had some bonfires up. I definitely had some good eats there like bratwurst, cookies, shrimp+bacon, turkey.. so delicious.

I still have the world’s biggest crush on Mark, and I really love his smile. He needs to smile more often because as usual, it makes my day. In one day it’ll be four months of dating. I’m a sap for things like this. And on the topic of counting, in two weeks + 1 day it’ll be my 21st birthday. I cannot wait.

Time for sleep. Minuscule amounts alcohol in my body + outside all day + full belly + having to drive an hour and a half home = exhausted.

You can never be too vague.

About thirty minutes ago I received an e-mail that I’m still quite giddy over. As you may or may not know, I’m a very huge Virb fan and am constantly on it every day. I even run Stylevirb.com which is a resource website for tutorials, pre-made profiles, and other odds’n’ends (though it’s still bare right now, need to get some content up.)

Anyway, this e-mail was an offer to design a profile for a very large online based band merchandise company. Needless to say I am ridiculously stoked and cannot wait to do this. I wouldn’t even care if I didn’t get reimbursement for it. Getting the offer alone, is enough to satisfy my needs. Then again, who am I to pass up the opportunity to fiddle around with what I know (that being coding and Virb) and getting something back in return.

Since I’m still on the topic of design, I’m about 75% done with the hand-coded theme. I have about 90% of the skeleton complete. That other 10% leaves the ancillary section of the website. Otherwise the overall concept is finished, it’s just a matter of finishing up the base wordpress theme pages, fixing up the graphics, checking browser compatibility, accessibility and validity and reworking the content. Though I’ll worry about the content after I put up the theme. Thanks for some of the peeps at Snark for providing some excellent constructive criticism.